Saturday, March 31, 2018

And now, along comes Victor Davis Hanson to shine some light
into the darkness. (via Maggie’s Farm) The darkness, or the willful blindness,
concerns the current narrative about the Trump administration. According to the
purveyors of this narrative, Trump has upended a world order that has prevailed
since the end of World War II. Trump is not only disruptive, but he is
undermining American leadership in the world and costing America the respect
of its allies and enemies.

Hanson admits that Trump’s apparently chaotic
administration, mixed with his own somewhat out-of-control pronouncements and
tweets have fed into the narrative.

As for the world order that Trump is destroying, Hanson
writes:

But is
the world really imploding after 70 years of supposed “calm”? (Disregarding the
Korean and Vietnam wars; Chinese, Cambodian, Rwandan, and Balkan genocides; at
least six Middle East conflicts; 9/11; a dozen U.S. interventions; a nuclear
Pakistan and North Korea; the Cuban and Berlin nuclear standoffs; 20 years of
Palestinian terrorism followed by 20 years of radical Islamic successors; a
European Union financial and border meltdown; the Russian absorption of eastern
Ukraine and Crimea, to name just a few “hot spots.”)

And that’s not all:

Donald
Trump’s postwar order did not give us alienated allies in the Middle East, a
rubbery NATO, North Korean intercontinental missiles, Iran on an ascendant arc
in the Middle East, China’s new Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Putin
unbound, and bewildered enemies like Cuba and Iran wondering why they were
courted as friends.

And, of course, the media has gone to war against Trump,
turning itself from an impartial purveyor of facts into a propaganda weapon
working to destroy an American president:

The
media likewise for the last year has joined the stampede. It is apparently
unaware that its shock at Donald Trump’s rhetoric, behavior, and comportment
had nothing to do with the reality of his governance. In all its self-righteous
exclamation that the new journalism meant reporters had to be advocates of
social justice and opponents of the likes of Donald Trump, the American media
almost turned into a propaganda ministry of 90 percent negative coverage of the
president. Yet by any fair standard, he had not as president done things 90
percent wrong.

The
longer, like Captain Ahab, they hunt down the mythical white Trump whale, the
more they are ruining the very reputation of journalism as they once inherited
it.

Place some emphasis on the last point. The mainstream media
has been undermining itself, and ruining its own reputation. They are consoling themselves with their increased profits.

What we need are a few facts, especially since those who
inveigh against how Donald Trump distorts facts are perfectly willing to distort facts in order to damage him.

Hanson provides an overview of what is going on in the
world:

In
truth, after 2016, the United States is increasing its financial commitments to
NATO. Several European members of the alliances may finally be addressing their
prior unmet obligations and increasing defense spending.

The
United Nations at least understands from Ambassador Nikki Haley that the United
States will call out, rather than aid and abet, its occasional anti-Semitic
lunacy. The president did not arbitrarily cancel the North American Free Trade
Agreement. Instead, the agreement is up for renegotiation on terms other than
the expectation that the United States will always accept asymmetrical deals as
part of its required role as the continent’s superpower.

Has the world descended into a Trumpian chaos? Not at all,
says Hanson.

The
world itself is not in chaos as alleged. It seems a far safer place than it was
between 2009 and 2016. ISIS is no longer a viable threat, promising to
establish a new caliphate, in between beheading, burning alive, and drowning
the innocent on video.

Israel
is once again a strong U.S. ally. Saudi Arabia for the first time in its
history is considering real reform. The Palestinians are beginning to
understand that they can still damn, even threaten the United States, but not
necessarily with U.S. aid money.

Iran is
no longer harassing or hijacking U.S. ships. It is not so frequently boasting
about what it will do to the Great Satan and Israel, much less sending missiles
near U.S. carriers. The world did not fall apart when the U.S. moved its
embassy to Jerusalem or withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord. That fact
instead exposed so-called elite predictions of Armageddon as the hysteria.

Syria
expects to be bombed each time it uses chemical weapons that were declared
“nonexistent” by an outgoing Obama Administration. North Korea is not boasting
any longer of incinerating American West Coast cities, but at least feigning
consultation with China about denuclearizing the peninsula.

China
understands that for two decades a naïve West has let it cheat at will on trade
agreements, on the spurious idea it would become more pro-Western and
democratic, the more that the West subsidized its breakneck modernization. Now
it is at least talking about discussing its asymmetrical relationships with all
its trading partners.

True enough, we can introduce some caveats. Yesterday, Trump
made some troubling noises about withdrawing from Syria. And yet, considering
the source, most commentators did not really believe them.

As for the current protests in Gaza, most savvy observers
understand that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have lost their war against
Israel. When you start sending unarmed people into the face of enemy fire, you
are trying to create more drama… about a lost cause that no one cares about any
more.

The
U.S. economy did not implode in early 2017 and take down the world with it. The
stock market did not crash. Our labor non-participation rate did not spiral.
Instead, the country may be on its way to achieving its first 12-month period
of 3 percent growth in 12 years. The stock market is at record highs, despite a
few bumps, and unemployment at near-record peacetime lows.

And, the American energy industry has been freed from its
regulatory shackles:

There
is also not so much talk of always increasing electricity rates, destroying the
coal industry, banning more fracking, and subsidizing more Solyndra-like crony
“green” companies. Instead, the United States is now the world’s largest energy
producer. Soon we may be our own largest petroleum producer. U.S. natural gas
production will likely reduce world carbon emissions more than will European
windmills and American solar panels. American companies are more likely to come
home than to keep pulling up and moving abroad. Silicon Valley tech companies
have never done so well under a president they hate so much.

Things are looking better for the American military and we
are confident that the American president will never again extol the heroism of
an army deserter in the Rose Garden or leave an American ambassador to fend for
himself when under fire:

The
U.S. military for the first time in eight years is recovering its former
strength. One way or another, there will likely be no more Bowe Bergdahl deals,
decreased security at U.S. embassies and consulates in the Middle East, Iran
Deals, or “strategic patience” and “lead from behind” doctrines. When outnumbered
Americans are trapped in a shootout abroad, it is more likely help will be on
the way than the requests of the beleaguered would be put on hold.

Consider this an executive summary of Hanson’s article. He offers a clear-eyed attempt to bring facts to the fore, and to allow facts
to counteract the fictions that are currently being trafficked by our media.